Tag Archives: iTunes

Though rumors of a potential full-fledged Apple home theater device have been showing up frequently over the past year, sources are telling Reuters that Apple is currently negotiating with streaming service EPIX to bring content to both the current Apple TV product and to “upcoming devices that stream content”. Read more

Essentially, iCloud is your new digital “hub”, allowing you to keep all of your digital “things” like music, movies, contacts, calendar events, photos, videos, apps, iBooks, and so on, in sync. No matter where your devices are, or what they are doing, new “things” can be pushed to them.

During the keynote, Jobs referred to MobileMe as being “not our finest hour”. With iCloud they aim to do better in every respect, and to make that clear they have also dropped the price to 100% free. There is no charge for any of iCloud, and there are no ads either. Read more

Apple has replaced the front page of Apple.com with a teaser for something iTunes-related due to happen tomorrow morning, Tuesday, November 16th.

In large bolded text, the page reads “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget”. Under that text is a curiously worded invitation to check back Tuesday for an “exciting announcement from iTunes”.

And under the text are 4 clocks each showing a different time from California, New York, London and Tokyo, which could be a clever way for Apple to announce that whatever is going to happen tomorrow, will happen at 10AM Eastern Time, but will be relevant for everyone around the world, at least in markets which currently have an iTunes Store.

Apple would not make such a big deal out of releasing iOS 4.2, however they would make a big deal out something like cloud based iTunes streaming or a subscription music service. Read more

Today, Apple will present several new products to its third party developer community…and through the tremendous press scrunity — not to mention what Steve Jobs recently called (an undesirable) “nation of bloggers” (ahem) — by extension the larger world of its users, enthusiasts and curious potential ‘switchers.’

Some of them will be software, some will be hardware, but most if not all will likely manage to attract their own little cyclonic orbits of controversy.

Here are some of the grapevine’s expectations; stay with us over the week ahead for post-event analysis and fresh dirt on what’s next from Infinite Loop. Read more

Whether or not Apple gives it the version number 10 mentioned in roadmap documents, and whether or not it has all of the features we’ve seen in early betas of iTunes 10, a new release of the company’s content-delivery-and-management software is as much a certainty is anything can be for a rumormonger in the lead-up to such an event with its docket under the ultimate control of such a small handful of people.

Although many of iTunes 10’s features have been clearly targeted at the company’s forthcoming Tablet computer/device, and a stripped-down feature set could be carried over into an interim release of iTunes 9 without compromising much of the functionality relevant to existing Macs/iPhones/iPods, the prevailing consensus on the grapevine seems to be that many ostensibly Tablet-specific features — like “e-reader” content delivery — will be available right away on existing Apple products and Windows PCs. Read more

In much of the media, Apple tablet rumors–and even its quarterly financial results–are showing up even more intensely than anything the company has brought to market before. Obviously, that’s saying something. But in those same media, that sentence would more commonly have ended with something more like “the run-up to the Super Bowl.” It’s little secret to most of this site’s readers that for the Mac community, the frantic run-up to an Apple Event makes the circus of a Super Bowl look like a well-mannered sit-down for British tea and crumpets.

Our January 27th Apple Event coverage starts with an overview and some analysis of the quarterly financial results that the company just announced this evening. Read more

With the release of Snow Leopard only a short time ago, many of Apples internal applications, save for a few such as iTunes and Front Row, have been rewritten in Cocoa and built as 64-bit applications. The reasons for doing so range from reluctance to retrofit major new features or fix old bugs in an application due for a Cocoa overhaul, to the obvious advantages that come with 64-bit computing; access to larger amounts of memory should it ever become necessary, and new processor features only available in 64-bit mode.

While Apple is no doubt still working on porting their flagship application to 64-bit Cocoa, the release version of iTunes 9 available from the Apple Website is apparently still 32-bit only. Read more

This page will serve as our live coverage for Apples 2009 Music Event for September 9th. You don’t need to refresh this page to see updates, they will appear at the top of the list below automatically.

The event is due to start at 10AM pacific daylight time, but we will open the feed a little early.

From extensive reports by reliable sources, we are very confident about the broad strokes of the following anticipated announcements at tomorrow’s Apple Event in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (just down the street from Moscone, home to Macworld and WWDC):

*iTunes 9.0 with social networking features, improved App Store and numerous other small enhancements — notably the “Cocktail” feature, which bundles in extra bonus content with full-album music purchases.
*Corresponding upgrades to App Store.ipa and iTunes.ipa on iDevices, separate from the iPhone OS 3.1 upgrade which looks like it will most likely wait until near the end of the month (circa the 25th, in parallel with AT&T’s MMS rollout)
*iPod Touch “GS” with GPS and Camera
*iPod Nano with enhanced screen, major on-board software upgrades, and built-in camera
*”Death” of the HDD-based iPod Classic, though this may not be explicitly announced at the Event itself but rather allowed to happen quietly
*New content-purchase options for iTunes and iDevice users, including video rentals for iDevices and streaming of certain types of content rather than users needing to download all content to their Mac or device in order to access it. Read more

Recently, Apple has made some particularly outrageous missteps with regards to its App Store approval process — approving obscenely offensive apps like “Shake the Baby” (only taken down after days of widespread condemnation), while denying apps & updates which are not themselves in violation of Apple’s (perhaps questionable) policies, but rather merely allow access to the same mature-oriented third-party content iPhone & iPod Touch owners can easily get via Mobile Safari. In recent days, Apple has dropped several hints that the enhanced Parental Controls in iPhone OS 3.0 may resolve most if not all of these issues.

Two of the most recent examples of questionable decisions by Apple’s App Store submission moderators (censors?) include the first update to Nine Inch Nails’ wildly popular & innovative “NIN: Access” app, the development of which we’ve followed closely here at Rumors….in that case, Apple moderators cited the ability to download podcasts (which is far from being specific to NIN: Access) which included NIN’s “Closer,” with a single offensive lyric (“I want to f-bomb you like an animal”). Read more

Since the launch of the original iPhone in 2007, users have been demanding various features like copy and paste, MMS, and stereo headphone (A2DP) support for instance. Today apple announced the addition of all those things and more. We will run through some of the major ones to give users an idea of what will be possible with new Apps in the future. Read more

As of Sunday morning Eastern time, reader and source reports have been coming in at a blistering pace as the online Apple Store reportedly went offline for most of the night. It came back later Sunday morning, and remained online throughout the remainder of the weekend.

Although the timing suggests it could be routine, the sheer volume of source reports and other reasons to suspect new hardware product announcements — almost certainly one or more new Macs — combined with the similarity between current speculation and long-standing rumors about new Mac Minis, price cuts, and/or a new Mac Pro….give us reason to suspect that such announcements could be imminent; if not in the next couple of days, then quite possibly before the week is out. Read more

What would a theoretical multi-drive Apple home server look like? Perhaps like a taller Mac Mini? Or a Time Capsule with drive bays like a Windows Home server or Drobo? Or a smaller more limited Xserve format? That would be cool, but not something Apple is likely to do. If they did make a multi-drive device, it would probably use built-in drives and not actual removable drive bays like other devices, if for no other reason than because it complicates things, and problems could arise when home users go to add drives to the thing. If anything they would build a device with multiple drives pre-installed and not easily removable but serviceable by Apple stores or by your friendly local geek. Read more

Late Tuesday evening, Apple released version 2.0.2, a relatively modest update officially containing only bug fixes but unofficially including a number of non-bugfix tweaks to several major components of the onboard operating system as well as its bundled applications in at least three confirmed instances — Settings, Mail and Safari.

Stay tuned for a full “0-day” hands on review from Rumormongers’ Labs to be followed by Reader Reports from our best sources across the globe…..for now, some early vital stats on iPhone 2.0.2 which represents a “quick” release of key functional & security changes which couldn’t wait for the massive and impressive 2.1 release due in roughly two to three weeks’ time….

Although a parallel release for the iPod Touch is expected shortly including all non-phone & non-mobile-data/non-GPS related code — primarily security fixes in the core software, Settings, Mail and Mobile Safari — the releases for the two devices are expected to be synchronous for version 2.1 which will be a fully free update for both devices, provided you are already running the version 2.x.x software package. Read more